In addition to processing voice calls from both wired and wireless phones, handheld communication devices now also communicate with other types of devices such as computers of all form factors, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) or handheld PCs, Integrated Communication Devices (ICDs), etc. Additionally, communication devices have merged the capabilities of cellular telephones, PDAs, ICDs, and computing devices and now provide increasingly sophisticated applications. Applications provide the communication device with the ability to perform a wide variety of tasks including drafting documents, preparing presentations, creating movies and music, taking pictures, maintaining schedules, etc. The output of these applications is typically a file that is saved to a memory accessible by the communication device. Because the communication device may be connected to various networks, it is desirable to share the resulting files with other devices on the network. For example, it is desirable to save a video file of a new baby using a cellular telephone and allow friends and family to view the video stored at the cellular telephone without sending the video file to each person using e-mail. Sharing of files and folders is less time consuming than physically sending the files to others using the network and requires less disk space by not requiring that a redundant copy be stored at another device.
Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) is a standardized, platform-independent set of extensions to the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) 1.1. WebDAV provides users with the ability to edit and to manage files remotely over a network by standardizing the functions necessary to move a file, to copy a file, to lock or unlock a file, to delete a file, to add property information to a file, etc., all without having direct access to the device storing the file. Thus, using WebDAV, a user can access a file system on a server accessible through a network using a browser or other software from multiple locations including home, work, school, while traveling, etc.
WebDAV additionally provides for the specification of access rights to files. Currently, however, there is not a solution to the problem of providing access control management to remote network file systems in handheld communication devices. The Internet Official Protocol Standards include HTTP authentication using Basic and/or Digest authentication. However, after authenticating a user to the server, the server “owner” may want to restrict some users to accessing a certain set of files while allowing other users to edit and/or to read a larger set of files at the server.
Most computer operating systems provide a multiple access computing environment that restricts user access to files in a file system based on the group to which the user belongs and on the group access rights defined for a specific file or folder. However, these access control systems are not easily understood or configured by the typical communication device user. As a result, many users may choose to avoid defining the access rights altogether or may define the access rights incorrectly. Thus, what is needed is an easily understandable method and device for defining access rights to a shared data item in a communication device environment.